Authors Blog

Kill the widows and orphans

In the "normal" world, widows and orphans are often lonely people and deserve compassion and support. Blue-chip and utility stocks were called "widow & orphan" investments because they could be relied on to pay dividends year after year—and maybe grow in value.

In typography, widows and orphans are lonely bits of text that do not deserve compassion. They are ugly, distracting and should be KILLED.

A widow is a single word or short line at the end of a paragraph that appears at the top of a page or column. The text sample below has a widow. It was easily fixed by condensing the text in the last part of the previous page.

An orphan  is a single word or short line at the end of a paragraph, or a tiny beginning of a paragraph at the bottom of a page or column. The text sample below has an orphan, ironically with the word "books." It was easily fixed by changing "did give" to "gave" in the last sentence.

With modern word-processing software it's easy to kill the offensive bits of text. You can condense the space between words, eliminate a word or two, or maybe replace a long word with a shorter alternative, such as "needed" for "necessary." Sometimes just eliminating one letter will fix your design.